Fisker may have been especially vulnerable to this (my understanding from some very brief searching is that core vehicle functionality required cloud check ins without fallback), but nothing about this is inherent to EVs (this is response to Weisenthal's tweet early in the article). An ICE vehicle could (and many manufacturers are increasingly pushing in this direction) have the exact same problems.

This is a much bigger problem that requires a bigger solution. I'm pretty intrigued by the mention at the end that several european manufacturers are collaborating on an opensource automotive software platform, although their track record on software isn't that encouraging.

• pstuart

  today at 4:04 AM

  That so much could be done in an open source context is encouraging -- if Fisker could have made that a core of the offering maybe that could have made it more viable? They can still sell hardware, parts, services and support but owners would have DIY options too. Everybody wins.

Oh, not the owners of the company, the owners of the cars the company made.

• frantathefranta

  today at 1:30 AM

  Yeah the headline made me think "oh god they are trying to get away with their scam for the third time".

This reads very AI. Pangram [0] agrees [1].

[0] Not perfect, but I think as good evidence as any: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.15654 [1] https://www.pangram.com/history/44cd07d3-ba94-4331-8c7f-a626...

> We had reviewed the Ocean in late 2023 and found the hardware genuinely attractive — but the software was simply not ready for prime time. The irony of that headline — “Coming soon, in a future software update” — now reads like an epitaph. Those future updates never came from Fisker. They came from the owners themselves.

It’s sad to see a good site put out bad AI writing like this.

• foobarbecue

  today at 3:07 AM

  "the irony reads" isn't even grammatically correct.

  • BoorishBears

    today at 3:17 AM

    I think what they're going for is

    > The irony of that headline...

    > [reflective pause]

    > "Coming soon, in a future software update" [shorter pause] now reads like an epitaph

I'd buy any Tesla, even the big truck, if it came with open source software! I don't want a car that's spyware like a phone. Let me be in control of it, let me mod it, let me own it.

Who's going to sell me one?

• pabs3

  today at 2:16 AM

  Tesla is full of open source software, including the Linux kernel. They probably are GPL violators though.

  https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/may/18/tesla-incomplete-... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/30/calling-all-tesla... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/21/tesla-no-source-c...

  See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software (similar to what happens with solar inverters):

  https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...

  • dmix

    today at 3:39 AM

    > I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software

    Aggressive regulations for emissions control software + industry deterrence for car modifications via insurance and warranties

• Hnrobert42

  today at 2:04 AM

  Not exactly what you are asking for, but did you see that Rivian recently provided a way for owners to disable the vehicle's LTE connection? It's straight In Canada. In the US, you have to ask a dealer.

• gonesilent

  today at 2:58 AM

  If you can find a good security vulnerability Tesla will give you root on your car as an award.

  • dylan604

    today at 3:36 AM

    If you found that vuln, wouldn't you already have root?

How involved is the software in the car, any while driving features? I'd be a little bit afraid of getting in that car even with the best efforts of the community, maybe it's not really for driving, i'd be even more nervous to get in a car with no updates, but still.

• jazzyjackson

  today at 2:15 AM

  More than anything I am nervous about having a car running priority code that can have mandatory updates pushed at any time that change the cars behavior -- not just throttle response and adjusting the emissions here, they could be updating thresholds for when the auto-pilot cancels and return to manual control, what level of cruise the car defaults to (GM BlueCruise IMO is terrible about this, it cancels hands free mode often, without any auditory alert) and so on.

  Give me a car without internet uplink any day!

  • dylan604

    today at 3:35 AM

    That's my issue. You could drive the car one day, go to bed, and the next day the car does not perform the same way it did yesterday. That's ridiculous. Any update needs to be approved by the user. Even if that means doing like Apple does where the user has to enter their password to approve the update scheduled for the middle of the night.

• freakynit

  today at 2:36 AM

  A few days back, the breaks of my car suddenly stopped working. By stopped-working I mean they just got jammed. No matter how much I press, they just wouldn't budge. The reason: my car had abruptly turned-off by itself, jamming the breaks with it. HOW TF are breaks NOT connected directly to the tyres? Why the tf they have to be software controlled? This is the "critical" path, and SHOULD be 100% under driver's control, at all times.

  And then just 3 days back, the same thing happened with steering wheel while I was reversing the car. But this time, the car hadn't even turned-off... the wheel just got jammed. Restarted the card, and it worked. What the absolute fck man!! What tf!

  Electronics and the corresponding software should stay 100% out of all critical paths inside of the car. Sure if it "helps", it's fine, but, that should NOT turn into such outcomes.

  • foobarbecue

    today at 3:14 AM

    What model? Is it possible that you accidentally had the car in a power-on mode, but without the engine started? I've done that by accident in my Mitsubishi Outlander Sport. The symptoms are similar to what you describe. Actually, it was at a car wash -- attendant left the car power on and I thought the engine was running so tried to drive away. Got the car to move a bit (happened to be downhill) but it was super scary because the brake pedal was taking more and more force to push down and I could barely turn the steering wheel. Luckily I was smart enough to put it in park, check everything, and realize the engine wasn't running!

    The brakes (n.b., spelling) and steering will feel increasingly stiff or "locked up" if your engine is off because the engine is not powering the vacuum system that powers the brake booster, and the steering will be extremely difficult to operate without the assistance of power steering.

    • freakynit

      today at 3:37 AM

      Yep yep yep.. that explains it. Not the software fault as I original suspected (at least in the break-jamming case). What I "felt" like jammed was probably just that vacuum system not helping, but since it happened for the first time (with me), and so abruptly, it felt like the brakes were jammed.

      But, the worrying, and a lot more scarier part is that this was not me accidentally leaving the car in accessory/power-on mode. The engine cut out while I was driving, which is itself a serious fault.

      Regarding the steering wheel case, it still feels like electronic/software fault since the car was actually reversing on engine power. But, similar to the first case, most likely it was also not jammed, rather, i lost the power steering assist, and hence, it "felt" like jammed since it happened first time to me.

      Im from India btw and the car in question is a 10+ year old Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire.

      ---

      Summary:

      1. Break issue: vacuum assist lost due to engine shutting off (by itself) which "felt" like it "jammed" the breaks, but, most probably had just gotten super stiff instead.

      2. Steering wheel: Still looks like a software/electronic fault, but, similar to the break case, it "felt" like jammed.. but, it had just gotten super stiff.

      This all, however, is still so wrong. In either of the cases the fault was not mine, yet, I was put in a situation that could have been very serious.

      • freakynit

        today at 3:48 AM

        So I researched a bit more on that break thingy... and just learned that this assist provides anywhere form 4x to 10x the assist. And without it, you would literally have to stand on the breaks with full body weight to have a similar effect. Wow!!

  • forgetfreeman

    today at 2:45 AM

    That's ridiculous. What year make and model car do you have?

    • freakynit

      today at 3:38 AM

      It's a 10+ year old Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire from India. See my reply to previous comment.. it doesn't seem like software fault (at least not fully).

• KennyBlanken

  today at 2:34 AM

  I remember watching a youtube video where the one guy who has become The Fisker Whisperer said that screwing up an update will total the vehicle because several of the control modules just can't be had anywhere, at least until another ends up in a junkyard.

  There is literally nothing about any Fisker automobile that makes it worth all this effort. But a handful of rich boomer tech execs think there's nothing else in the world that could possibly meet their expectations for a hybrid or electric vehicle, have more wealth than they know what to do with, and so here we are.

  Saabs are much the same way. Some nonsense about a completely overengineered security system in the newer vehicles that makes losing a key a "well, now you're fucked" event, I believe?

Car owners the current title changes the meaning

"We need more open source in the auto industry"

Uh no, we need significantly less software in the auto industry. Software sucks. It excels at taking relatively simple (if inconvenient) problems and in exchange for some notional convenience introduces problem spaces so baroque they border on the occult. An example: between all of the seat controls on the driver's seat of my wife's car I've counted 16 individual switch positions and something like six motors, all wired into the CAN bus so the central console can save user preferences.

Without bothering to check the OEM parts cost to replace that seat I am absolutely dead ass certain that it by itself costs more than my first three cars combined. And all of this pageantry replaces the two traditional dumb mechanical levers to control seat distance from the pedals and back tilt. This and real-time cell network surveillance is all the proof I need that executive depravity in the auto industry is functionally unlimited, and the reason why I wouldn't accept a "modern" car as a gift, much less buy one.

[dead]

So a leasing company bought the source code for $2.5 million and then cut off owners after they refused an additional deal. What was the point, then? Is there anything rational about this market interaction?

• aleksejs

  today at 1:52 AM

  The leasing company leases these cars to Uber drivers in NYC, who presumably did not get cut off.

  • qdotme

    today at 4:24 AM

    That explains the over-representation of Oceans in NYC’s supercharging network, and one of the worst side-effects of opening that network to non-Tesla operators.

    Overall I think it’s a good thing, but it’s the closest to Eternal September I ever experienced in my life, the sudden change inclusion of cultural strangers in a shared space with its customs etc.

• justinclift

  today at 1:48 AM

  Leasing company probably thought they'd found some suckers to pay their (the leasing company's) cloud bills.

• fooker

  today at 1:41 AM

  Patent trolling

> No more over-the-air updates. No more connected services. No more warranty.

LLM slop. Why does the author believe he is entitled to our attention if he cannot even bother to use his own words?

• dylan604

  today at 3:38 AM

  Well now I'm nervous I'm going to be susceptible to AI slop as that's a set of sentences I would absolutely have written my self. That kind of cadence is something that I remember being taught especially since it's comes as a group of three.